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August Kleinzahler

The Letters of Thom Gunn edited by Michael Nott, August Kleinzahler, and Clive Wilmer

by
August 2022, no. 445

Of the major Anglo-American poets of the previous century, none was more transformed, at least on the surface, by the journey across the Atlantic than Thom Gunn (1929–2004). Travelling in the opposite direction, T.S. Eliot found echoes of his mid-Western emotional repression and discreet anti-Semitism in the England of his era, while W.H. Auden, who carried his world with him, was only mildly affected by his time in America.

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He seldom spoke, even when well, and when he did it was misterioso, brief,
a gnomic shorthand, often only a grunt,
but his musicians got it, Nellie, Boo-Boo, and Sphere III too.
Nowadays next to nothing comes out his mouth, nothing at all.

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